Museum Of Ice Cream San Francisco

The Museum of Ice Cream is a pop-up interactive museum located in different major cities across the United States. The San Francisco museum is housed in an old bank building at 1 Grant Avenue. Tickets to get in are hard to come by, so I was very excited when my cousin Lei informed me a couple months ago that she would be taking me along with her sister Mei and daughter Fiorella.

We had tickets for 6pm, and when we arrived they put us into a small group with other attendees to explain the philosophy and rules for the venue. The decor is a sensory explosion of color (mainly pink) and kitsch design as you enter each themed room. Our first stop was Marye's Diner, which was themed like a 1950s diner and served up some local peach flavored ice cream. Fiorella had fun dancing to the tunes, and the records on the wall had their artists and song titles changed to be more ice cream themed.

The Make A Statement room was where you could spell out a message on the wall with pink magnetised letters. They also served My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream, which is ice cream wrapped in mochi dough. I had the cookies and cream and it was really good.

Next up was the Cherry on Top room, where we got cherry flavored cotton candy sprayed with glitter to eat. The room is a social media dream with its giant cherries and clouds hanging from the ceiling.

The Gummy Garden room is like walking into a life-size Candy Land game with its giant gummy bears, lollipops, candies and macarons.

The Ice Cream Truck Pick room takes its inspiration from the different types popsicles you can buy from an ice cream truck (although normally they wouldn't be protruding from a wall).

The Rainbow room is a tribute to San Francisco's history and includes a unicorn! They even served little cones of unicorn milk ice cream. The room next to it was inspired by Pop Rocks with an entire giant geometric pop rock wall.

The most popular room at every Museum of Ice Cream is the Sprinkle Pool, which as you can guess was a giant pool filled with plastic sprinkles. When you step into the pool you immediately sink down into them. We only got to spend a short time in there, but it was Fiorella's favorite spot (and she was upset when we had to get out).

After shaking and blowing off the sprinkles hiding in our clothes we headed out to a row of themed spaces with swings before ending up at the gift shop. The Museum of Ice Cream is a lot of fun, and really built for kids and those young at heart. The San Francisco museum has been extended until February 2018, so if you get the chance to go take advantage of it.

SFMOMA

I took the Golden Gate Ferry into San Francisco today to explore some of the latest exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). My first stop was the retrospective of photographer Walker Evans work. It contained 300 prints and around 100 other objects spanning the Great Depression and postwar period which documented everyday American life in the twentieth century. The exhibition runs until 4 February 2018.

Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules contains more that 150 of his artworks from throughout his career. He often collaborated with other artists and combined multiple disciplines and media within his work while commentating on various cultural and social issues of the time. The exhibition runs on Floor 4 through 25 March 2018.

Next I checked out Louis Bourgeois Spiders. I have seen some of her spider sculptures in the past, and this exhibition featured spiders in a range of different sizes and materials. It's located in the sculpture gallery on Floor 5 and runs until 4 September 2018.

The final exhibition I saw (and heard) was Soundtracks, which featured works from different artists across the entire museum, but mainly spanned Floor 7. This large-scale exhibition focused on the role of sound in contemporary art and how it relates to space. There were so many different types of works, from sculptures to immersive installations to recorded performances. It was really interesting to walk around and experience the different soundscapes of each piece. If you would like to check it out get in quick as Soundtracks finishes on 1 January 2018.

Sydney- Museum Of Contemporary Art Australia

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) is conveniently located in The Rocks near Circular Quay. Outside of the museum they have set up the Cherry Blossom Bar for the summer, which is where Tash, Mary, David, Belinda and I met up on Friday afternoon for pre-show drinks before heading across to the Sydney Opera House to see Crowded House. It's a nice, breezy spot with views of the waterfront and paper lanterns along the branches of cherry blossom trees by the bar. There were a variety of drinks on offer and I went with the Fuji Funk cocktail which had campari, yuzu, lemon juice, gin, vermouth, aloe vera and tonic water. It was quite tasty and refreshing. You can also order food from the Japanese inspired menu, which includes gyoza and bento boxes to share.

Today Belinda and I returned to MCA to check out some of the current exhibitions. Our first stop was Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect With Everything, which is the first exhibition by this Japanese contemporary artist in the Southern Hemisphere. Miyajima's works mainly explores the passage of time through the use of small digital counting devices emitting different colored LEDs that are contained within sculptures and various large scale pieces and immersive environments.

The room-scale installations were my favorite part of the exhibition. The red environment of "Arrow of Time" is about the irreversibility of time and how we need to live in the moment. It contains digital devices hanging at various heights from the ceiling, and there are bean bags around the floor for you to lay down on to stare up at devices as they count down.

The most breathtaking piece though was "Mega Death," which is a giant blue room with each of the digital devices on the three walls representing life on Earth. The counters go off and on at different times, illustrating death and birth. However, it is the unknown factor of when and for how long they will all go off in unison, plunging the room into darkness, that makes the piece so interesting. Despite these mass extinctions, life gradually begins again as the individual counters slowly come back to life.

The other main exhibition that we checked out was for Melbourne artist Louise Hearman, which showcased her paintings and drawings from 1990-2016. Her works featured portraits and some surreal paintings with animals and other objects that made for some unique compositions.

Louise Hearman's exhibition closes on 4 December 2016, while you have until 5 March 2017 to catch Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect With Everything.

SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has been closed for renovations for the past three years, so I was excited it finally reopened in mid-May and that I would get a chance to check it out while visiting the Bay Area. The building itself is beautiful, and there are seven floors with multiple exhibitions around certain themes on each level to explore. Needless to say, I spent most of my day there.

There are many highlights and must sees when visiting SFMOMA. Alexander Calder: Motion Lab showcases his pieces from the late 1920s to late 1960s both inside a gallery and outside on a terrace.

Alexander Calder

Many different pop artists are featured in Pop, Minimal and Figurative Art including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close and Sol LeWitt among others.

Andy Warhol

Roy Lichtenstein

Chuck Close

Sol LeWitt

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; George Segal

Another interesting exhibition is Typeface to Interface which explores graphic design since 1950. It features posters and other visual communication tools (including the 1984 prototype of the Apple touch-screen tablet), as well as computer programed drawings being done on a chalkboard wall.

SFMOMA also has an extensive collection of paintings and sculptures on display in Open Ended, which features masterworks and experimental pieces from some of the world's most famous artists all in one place.

Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian and O'Keeffe

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Dali, Magritte, Duchamp and Rothko

Calgary

Our last day in Canada was spent exploring downtown Calgary. First we went to the Calgary Tower for its 360 degree panoramic views of the city. As we walked around the observation deck you could see Calgary, the surrounding prairies and even the Canadian Rockies out in the distance.

Near the Tower is Stephen Avenue Walk, which is a pedestrian mall during the day lined with shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. If you have the time you can do some shopping and then grab something to eat from a wide range of restaurants along the walk. 

We ended up spending the majority of our day at the wonderful Glenbow museum, which has a variety of art and history exhibitions across three levels of its building. My favorite exhibition was Kaleidoscopic Animalia, which was designed and curated by fashion designer and Glenbow Artist-in-Residence Paul Hardy. He combined original fashion designs with animal inspired artifacts and artworks from the museum's collection to create thematic department store style windows. It was a very unique way to put things together, and the exhibition had a playful and humorous undercurrent in many of the displays. It is on until 5 September 2016.

There were also two exhibitions focused on Canada's First Peoples with Native Cultures from the Four Directions, and Niitsitapiisini: Our Way of Life which focused on the history, traditions and values of the Blackfoot people from their own perspective.

On the walk back to the hotel to pick up our rental car I took one of my favorite shots from the trip - reflections of the sky and surrounding skyscrapers on two glass skyscrapers downtown. This trip has shown you can find beauty both in nature and urban environments.

We drove to the airport mid-afternoon to make sure we would beat the traffic and check in on time for our early evening flight to San Francisco. In what was a first for me, we actually went through United States customs in Canada. Unfortunately the international terminal is currently under construction, so it was very cramped with a lot of areas blocked off. We did manage to grab a table to eat a late lunch/early dinner at The Pub before boarding our flight home. On the way back to Marin we encountered some of the thickest fog I've ever seen driving through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Banff

Today we explored the town of Banff for our last day in the Canadian Rockies. The downtown area along Banff Avenue is the shopping boutique and restaurant strip with a mountain village feel. The Bow River flows south of downtown, which you cross to get to a few tourist attractions around town.

Our first stop was Sulphur Mountain and the Banff Gondola. The fully enclosed gondola cabins hold four people and glide up the mountain quietly during an eight-minute journey to the top. Unfortunately the upper terminal building was under construction (it's due to open later this summer), but the 360 degree views at the top are pretty spectacular as you walk along the one kilometer ridgetop boardwalk. There are not only great views of the town of Banff, but also all the surrounding mountain ranges. We had brief periods of drizzle and sunshine as we walked around and even saw some ground squirrels and mountain sheep before heading back down the mountain.

Next we went to Cave and Basin National Historic Site, the birthplace of Canada's national park system. In 1883 three railway workers discovered the hot springs and tried to make a claim for the land, which the government turned into a reserve in 1885. There is a boardwalk around the basin and hot springs, which flow down the hill into a mineral pool with different colored algae. Here you can also find the endangered Banff springs snail (which is why you are not allowed to touch the water).

The Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum along the Bow River looks like a log fortress. It is Alberta's oldest museum and has artifacts and life-size dioramas of the traditional life of the First Nations people from this region. I found the articles of clothing and related artifacts to be the most interesting part of the displays.

We then bid farewell to Banff, driving east on the Trans-Canada Highway to our next destination, Calgary. The Canadian Rockies slowly disappeared in the distance and the landscape became more flat plains. We made good time and knew we had hit the outer limits of Calgary due to the traffic. On our way into the city we passed Canada Olympic Park and the ski jumps that were used in the 1988 Winter Olympics. We managed to navigate our way to the International Hotel of Calgary in downtown where we are staying tonight. Tomorrow we will explore Calgary and then fly back to San Francisco.

Zorn and Matisse

My cousin Leilani and I decided to check out a couple of exhibitions at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco to celebrate the start of the new year and do something fun while I'm in town.  Our first stop was Anders Zorn: Sweden's Master Painter.  Zorn was one of the most famous artists at the turn of the 20th Century and the exhibition features 100 pieces including his watercolors, oil paintings, etchings and even some bronze statues.  There is no denying how talented Zorn was even at an early age.  His watercolors are amazingly detailed and realistic looking- you could be fooled to think that you were looking at a photograph.  He travelled extensively and painted local scenes and people.  He also did a lot of portraiture work of members of high society and important people of the time, including US Presidents Grover Cleveland and the official White House portrait of William Howard Taft.  In his later years he returned to his native Sweden and depicted scenes of Nordic life and customs.  I highly recommend this exhibition, which runs until 2 February.

Next we looked at Matisse from SFMOMA.  As SFMOMA is closed for construction, this exhibition brings together works by Henri Matisse held by SFMOMA and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.  It is a small show of 27 paintings, drawings and bronze statues spanning four decades of his career.  Seeing Matisse's work was a bit of a contrast to the realism of Anders Zorn, but I liked the use of vibrant colors in his paintings.  The exhibition runs until 7 September so you have plenty of time to check out this little slice of Henri Matisse.